It's been a while animation blog, it's been a while. I haven't exactly been up to much animation or build work since finishing my second year of university at the start of summer but getting back into the swing of it hasn't been as daunting as I'd thought. Lets hope the same can be said for blogging.
So I've got some drawings, paintings and such done through the summer holidays that I'll get round to posting some pictures of soon enough but lets get down to the nitty gritty first shall we? I started back at uni just a couple of weeks ago and since then I've already done and dusted my first project:
Specialist Animation!
I shan't bore you with the details so I'll give you the jist of it. Two weeks; first, complete a short Lip Synced animated sequence using a puppet and clay mouths. For this part of the brief my character had to do a sort of advertisement for the National Student Survey, trying to get students to go and take part in it blah, blah, blah............. the second part was to complete a 10 second Mime animated sequence.
I'll start this off with my Lip Sync work I think. So after getting the lovely Kevin to record a variety of audio tracks of the mini script I'd written I broke down the sound using Premiere Pro (the vain of my life) and bar charts/ dope sheets. Now, before you hear it let me just explain, Kevin ain't no voice actor, my script is pun filled and lame, and it was rather late in the night when things were recorded. Okay, you're all warned. Once the audio track was broken down I started my character build, following the ideas I'd sketched out at the start of the week.
As you can see the whole thing is made from Plasticine that I moulded into the required shapes then fixed them together using some wire. The stripes are also Plasticine that I rolled out thin then stuck to the body. Top Tip: use some talcum powder to smooth down the surface and give a smooth, shiny look (it's also pretty good on greasy hair as well but this is besides the point!). All the face is made from Plasticine too, apart from the eyes which are some beads I found. He's not finished yet though, he still needs a pot to sit in.
After searching the shops for longer than you should spend looking for a tiny pot, if you ask me, I came home to find I already had some at home. Typical. I adjusted the pot slightly so that it would have a lip at the top then stuffed it with brown Plasticine that I textured to look more like dirt. When I was happy with how it looked I shoved a pencil into it so that the two parts, body and pot that is, would fix together nice and secure. And here we have it, my final character: Carl the Cactus.
Before I forget, here is my sheet of clay mouths I made, again using Plasticine, to use whilst animating the Lip Sync.
Okay, and now for the final animated piece featuring the wonderful Carl:
Come on now just a little bit more to get through then you can get back to your life. I'll move swiftly onto my mime work. I don't know if it's just me but when I hear "Mime" I instantly think "Guy stuck in a box". Yeah, I had a feeling it was just me. Anyway, with the short time I had I didn't really have the time to be building a brand new maquette to be animating with. Luckily for me I've had a fully working maquette just waiting in the wings since my first year of uni, where I'd used it in a different project. It needed some repairs but nothing too time consuming which I'm so thankful for.
Due to my terrible habit of never really sticking to my meticulously thought out work plan/ schedules I had left myself with only 2 days to film my Mime animation. Animation isn't really my forte and for my final year at uni I'm really going to be sticking with build and design work but for this project I had to animate. Even with my limited skills and the short amount of time I must say I'm pretty pleased with how my animation turned out. I'm hoping the animation conveys clearly enough what the puppet is Miming? Is that the right word? Ah well here it is, enjoy:
Until next time you lovely people.
